From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Apr 23 12:52:50 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA19744 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 23 Apr 1997 12:52:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sax.sax.de (sax.sax.de [193.175.26.33]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id MAA19729 for ; Wed, 23 Apr 1997 12:52:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from uucp@localhost) by sax.sax.de (8.6.12/8.6.12-s1) with UUCP id VAA02065 for hackers@freebsd.org; Wed, 23 Apr 1997 21:52:44 +0200 Received: (from j@localhost) by uriah.heep.sax.de (8.8.5/8.8.5) id VAA03892; Wed, 23 Apr 1997 21:25:21 +0200 (MET DST) Message-ID: <19970423212521.KR50958@uriah.heep.sax.de> Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 21:25:21 +0200 From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BIOS setup via serial port? References: <199704231845.LAA00493@precipice.shockwave.com> X-Mailer: Mutt 0.60_p2-3,5,8-9 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) In-Reply-To: <199704231845.LAA00493@precipice.shockwave.com>; from Paul Traina on Apr 23, 1997 11:45:01 -0700 Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk As Paul Traina wrote: > I'd like to build some headless machines, but one of the things that > really bugs me is that I can't see the BIOS boot messages or enter > setup without having a keyboard and video card attached. > > Does anyone have any pointers or ideas on how to handle this (changing out > the flash bios on the motherboard is certainly an option)...? Write an INT 0x10 fake engine that forwards the requests over a serial line. It probably needs to keep track of the ``screen image'' in some buffer. This might turn out to become a mini-curses... ...and then, hope the best the setup utility is actually using the BIOS functions, as opposed to write directly to the screen buffer. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)